


The Recasting of Circumstance

by SherlockMalfoy



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, Minor Character Deaths, Multiple powers, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Season/Series 04, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 17:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20877674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockMalfoy/pseuds/SherlockMalfoy
Summary: War inevitably rides on the back of discovery. In the aftermath of Claire's dive off the ferris wheel, Specials the world over are hunted and their species nearly wiped out. If only there hadn't been so much infighting. If only the Company had kept to it's true purpose. If only Claire hadn't been so desperate to show the world what she could do. If only the lonely watchmaker hadn't been so desperate to prove himself better than what he was... If only they had more Time.When the writing is on the wall and that word is 'extinction', the only thing left to do is change the writing. By any means necessary.





	The Recasting of Circumstance

**Author's Note:**

> Rating change to Mature after I re-read the end. Figured I'd do that just to be on the safe side.

_ Where do we go from here? It is a question we all must ask ourselves once we have come through the other side of turbulent times. No time had ever been more so than now. _

_ What do we do with a world that harbors a strong fear of the unknown? A world where family and friends may turn against us for a strange anomaly of our birth? For characteristics of our genetics over which we have no control? _

_ Do we continue on as we always have? Put our heads down and hope the storm passes while we continue to do what we believe is morally right? Do we wait for those who are ruled by fear and hatred of what is different to start tightening the nooses around our necks? _

_ Or do we listen to that little voice in the back of our minds? The one that demands we survive by any means necessary. The voice of our evolutionary imperative. Do we turn our backs against the world and ignore their desperate cries or do we rise up and show this brave new world that we are made of stronger stuff than they? _

It was… not good.

The aftermath of Claire’s actions painted a target on the back of all Specials across the globe. Rebel was found first, tracked down by his digital footprint and taken into what the government called Protective Custody. Gabriel was lucky. He hid in plain sight. His ability to shapeshift gave him a freedom few others had. He seemed to fade into the crowd, unable to be found or detected. He kept in contact with Peter though, to assure him he wasn’t slipping back into his old habits and ways. They met up for drinks sometimes, though discretely and with Emma. She had been so grateful that she’d agreed to bring him something from her sister so that should someone be following Peter around, they wouldn’t think anything of Peter spending time with his girlfriend and her sister.

When Emma and Peter broke up some months down the line, they remained good friends.

Until Emma disappeared, too.

The last time Peter saw his mother he knew whatever protection Claire had secured for them was simply an empty promise. He borrowed shapeshifting and fled with Gabriel to Mexico. From there they went south into Central America and even further, ending up in Brazil for a time.

When Ando and Hiro were caught in a sting operation, he asked Gabriel for a very specific power.

The man refused to give it to him, but instead presented Peter with a plan of action.

“There’s a woman in Argentina with your original ability. If you copy her power I’ll give you all of them except my own.”

By the time they reach the village, nearly everyone is dead.

They don’t like Specials in Argentina. The whole village was full of them. All of them were refugees from other places. They find the old woman as she is dying. Peter copies her power and becomes ill as his body absorbs more than just the one. He spends a week and a half in recovery. Gabriel spends that time caring for him between laying the dead to rest.

They start to head back north to Mexico. The ultimate plan is to get to Japan. To reach Hiro’s sister who, unlike them was not Special. But she was a known ally. She kept both her brother's and her father’s secrets. Gabriel reasoned that with both her husband and her brother imprisoned she would help them get both men free.

It takes years of planning. Months of preparation. But finally, after confirming that Hiro and Ando are both still alive and where they are held, they make their move. With Kimiko’s unwavering support they are able to secure everything they need to pull it off. And know they only have one chance.

They get Hiro and Ando out, but not before Hiro is injured and dying.

Peter copies Ando’s power, and since he’s dying anyway…

“May I, Hiro? We can’t save you and your power is key to what we need to do. What we need to change to save us all.”

Gabriel rips a strip of fabric off his shirt and offers it to him. “There’s no time for… anesthetic. Bite down on this, it may help.”

Peter and Ando don’t talk about what’s going on in the next room. They don’t look at one another when Gabe staggers out, hands clean but his nails still tinged with red. He’s wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve, feeling genuine remorse and disgust for what he has done.

It’s the first time that Gabriel has killed for power since he killed Nathan all that time ago. He looks like he wants to be sick on the tile.

Peter was proven right after the man doubles over and lets loose on the floor.

If anyone still doubted the sincerity and truth of Gabriel’s change of heart after talking with Claire and being trapped by Parkman all that time ago… there could be no doubt now.

Peter was the one to clean up after. He immolated the remains and put them in trash bag before putting that into a box. When they returned to Japan, Gabriel refused to go with them to see Kimiko until he had found a suitable urn. He turned it to solid gold before putting Hiro’s remains inside. He would not meet anyone’s eye and kept telling himself it was important for the plan to work. They needed his power and he was dying anyway.

Once they were alone and he had explained, as quickly and as thoroughly as he could, why they desperately needed him for their plan, Hiro had taken the strip of cloth, folded it methodically and before shoving it into his own mouth told him that if his death could save the world and save them from extinction, then he would give his life - and his power - freely.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“It’s the only way to ensure the secret stays safe.”

“Hiro once said that if you go back too far and change too much…”

“That’s the plan. We don’t want to step on more butterflies than we need to, but we have to crush some big ones. It’s the only way to stop all of it from happening.”

And with that, Peter charged up with the red booster lightning before touching Gabriel’s shoulder. With a crack and a boom, the two men were gone from Kimiko’s office, spiraling into the void as they searched for the right thread. The right butterflies to crush. Their present… their future unraveling from existence.

Samson Gray’s body was found in a car at a roadside diner, his wife and son were nowhere to be found. A couple inside the restaurant claimed two men accosted Mr. Gray at his car before one man reached inside for the wife and child. Mrs. Virginia Gray, Samson Gray’s sister-in-law stated she and her husband were meeting his brother for lunch and that Samson was odd, yes, but not so odd that someone should want to kill him.

Marleene Gray, Samson Gray’s wife, is believed to be kidnapped along with their son, Gabriel.

Marleene Gray and her son were, in reality, settling into a nice and quiet neighborhood in an undisclosed location of Canada. She was grateful to have been rescued from her abusive husband who, she was distressed to learn, had been planning to sell their son to his brother for money to pay his gambling debts.

She and Gabriel were set up with new identities, a house, and even a job with a local tailor where she was hired on as a seamstress.

Maury Parkman turned up dead in the winter of 1990. His head was removed from his body and left as a gift on Arthur Petrelli’s desk at his office. No letter. No menacing note. Just… there. Eyes wide in horror and mouth twisted in a silent scream.

Linderman was left in a coma where he didn’t know he was dreaming. As far as he knew, life was continuing on as it should.

Angela Petrelli decided to suddenly take the children on a vacation for Christmas to Martha’s Vineyard. Instead she took them to a Company safe house in Texas that was run by her VERY good friend Kaito Nakamura.

That weekend Arthur Petrelli died in a car accident.

Or so the news proclaimed. The remains had to be identified by dental records.

Charles Deveaux got a surprise visitor in his dreams. One he was not expecting for quite some time yet. In his waking hours, his power was simple. He could read thoughts. Push thoughts and ideas into others… Enter someone’s dreams, or pull them into his own. It was the dreaming part he had experimented with the most unlike his former colleague Maury. Maury expanded how he could influence others to his will. Charles wanted to be more… benign. Draw people to him who needed advice or guidance. He’d done that with Angela often enough over the years. And expected it of her younger son, too.

He just hadn’t realized it would be so soon. Or perhaps… so late.

“My you’ve grown.”

“You know who I am?”

“Who could forget that pouty little lip… Am I next then, Peter?”

“No. You never did anything except be the voice of reason. You tried to get the others to do the right thing. But they wouldn’t listen.”

“And now you’ve come to fix our mistakes.”

He nods. “I want you to get together with my mother, Bob Bishop, and Kaito Nakamura. Take the company back to what it was supposed to be. Not what my father twisted it into.”

“And how would you know what the Company was meant to be?”

“Before my brother was killed… Right before actually… my mother had us meet her in Coyote Sands.” He watches Charles tense. “She told us what happened. She told us why the Company was founded. But Arthur… he twisted it to his own ends. And because of him and his followers, the world went to shit that I have to mop up.”

“How does this make you any different from Arthur?”

“It doesn’t. But at least this way we have a fighting chance at survival. You were one of the lucky ones. You died before everything kicked off with the eclipse. The rest of us… well, last I heard they put ma’s brain in a jar.”

Charles does what Peter has told him to do.

When Angela confirms that she’s had visions of the future - a terrible future involving the full genocide of their kind, he knows that Peter was telling the truth. Now they had to listen or suffer the consequences.

A man named Noah Bennet is called in by the CEO of Primatech.

More than a few people are sent packing with their minds wiped that day.

Mr. Bennet included.

_One of us, one of them_ doesn’t work so well anymore when you’re not hunting, capturing, and experimenting on Specials.

The Company catches up with Peter and Gabriel in a quiet neighborhood in 2006.

Of course, they aren’t using those names. They haven’t for years.

It was an accident, really. They’d actually been looking for their neighbor, Mr. Gregory Michaels and his mother, Abigail. Both had thought nothing of donating blood to the Human Genome Project.

Shortly after this the deep vault of the Odessa facility is broken into and all of the samples of the Shanti Virus are destroyed. A note was left behind, addressed to Dr. Chandra Suresh informing him to leave the Michaels family alone. It also served as a reminder to those heading the Company that there was someone bigger and stronger than them watching over their shoulders. Someone who wasn’t afraid to step in and handle certain things they believed were a problem.

When Kaito tracks down and speaks with Dr. Suresh after the incident, there is a second attempt made to contact Mr. Gregory Michaels and his mother.

This time a very important formula is taken and destroyed, and Angela Petrelli gets a visitor she did not expect.

“Peter…”

“Good to see you alive, Ma. Lets try to keep it that way.”

“When Charles said… he didn’t tell me it was you.”

“That’s because it’s not. Right now your son is getting settled into his new schedule. Med school’s tough, but it’s a good fit for him. He’ll make a great pediatrician. He’s good with kids and likes to help people. I used to be like that, despite being a Petrelli.”

“Why are you here?”

“To completely rewrite the future. My hope is that we erase ourselves from existence. Gabe seems to think when it’s changed course entirely we’ll end up somewhere in the future with a new life. Hopefully a better life.”

“You can’t change the past, Peter.”

“My powers say otherwise, Ma. Remember that kid Nathan had years ago. The one the Company gave over to Noah Bennet to raise? One day very soon she’ll come into her power. And she will never stop showing it off to anyone that will look. Chandra Suresh keeps trying to find a man we don’t want him to find. If he does, he turns the man into a killer like his father. Together Claire Bennet and Gabriel Gray do more to expose us and make the normal people fear us than Coyote Sands ever could.”

“You killed Samson Gray.”

“I didn’t, but I did help. It was… something personal for my partner. And if you don’t want us to escalate and tear down the entire Company, you will find a way to reign in Chandra Suresh. I was friends with his son, Mohinder. He’s a really great guy, but more tenacious than his father when it comes to finding people like us.”

Chandra Suresh was hauled in by the Company and given an ultimatum after Angela’s visitation.

He could either have his memory wiped of the entire idea of Specials or he could work for the Company, on the condition he only studied those the Company brought forth voluntarily.

“If you were to approach someone like us with a dangerous ability, you could get injured or worse. Killed. We remember, Dr. Suresh, from Coyote Sands. You’re very driven and only seek to know more for the sake of science itself and not for personal gain. Perhaps we can help one another.”

Peter Petrelli woke up in a rather large and comfortable bed in a rather nice apartment and stretched. His body was sore and aching, but it was a good kind of ache. The kind of ache that told him he’d gone all night with one hell of a man who knew exactly how to hit every right button and work over every inch of his body from head to toe.

He sat up and put his feet on the floor, slightly disappointed that the other side of his bed was now empty. But he could smell the most amazing scent in the air wafting in from down the hall. That warm kind of smell that pancakes or waffles give off as they’re cooking. A slight tang of something… ah, blueberries he thinks. He rubs a hand down his face and feels the cool metal on his finger and smiles to himself.

That’s right… over the weekend they…

And that’s when the blinding headache kicks in. He doesn’t have time to shout. He barely has time to stand up before he falls over with a thump to the hardwood floor. The last sensation he has before everything goes to black is that he thinks there’s something dripping down his nose or out of his ear.

In the kitchen, a man stands at the stove with a sly smile on his face, pouring batter into the pan and waiting just a moment before adding the miniature blueberries. Then, a light drizzle of more batter over each one to seal them in before it’s flipped.

When he hears the thud coming from down the hall, he gives a small nod and hums to himself.

It didn’t take long for Gregory Michaels to figure out what had happened when he slipped in the shower that morning. After all, he’d had the ability to figure things out, to understand them easier than others, since he was a boy. Then that eclipse happened a few years back and… well… he was probably one of the only people alive who could put together IKEA furniture without a single Swedish diagram. And do it correctly.

He was also good at compartmentalizing. As new memories had begun to flood in, he sorted them into present and alternate past. It was… odd to see himself as a child from someone else’s perspective. To watch himself grow up with his mother but also have memories of growing up with a crazy woman who called herself his mother. To realize that a version of himself had been the odd neighbors that often looked out for him and his mother when things got tough.

So it was easy for him to know and understand what had happened. He and someone else had tampered with time to an extent that whenever he had first come from he could not go back to. It wasn’t just altered - the circumstances to enable such a feat simply didn’t exist any longer. But, in order for the present to exist, his alternate self must also still exist in some form to prevent a paradox from occurring.

Once he figured that out over a cup of hot tea, it was easy to move past it. After all, his other self had been in a similar situation before with some other man’s memories. Memories he was grateful he didn’t have now.

It would have been rather awkward at the next family get-together if he remembered things about his new brother-in-law that were meant to be private.

Like the mole on his thigh next to-

And that thought was interrupted when he heard doors being flung open. He hummed as he slid the next pancake onto a plate and poured the last of the batter into the pan. He waits. And he waits. Eventually, Peter appears in the kitchen.

“We did it.”

“We did.”

“You were right.”

“I’m always right, Peter.”

“We’re married?”

“Apparently so. Does this bother you?”

Gabriel finishes at the stove and turns it off before taking two plates to the table. Syrup is levitated along beside him.

“You have your powers?”

“Not all of them. I lost time travel and a lot more. But this one… I believe I got it while removing a tumor from a patient.” He sits down and pours himself another cup of tea. It takes him a moment to Rolodex through the memories of this life rather than the other. “I’m… a neurosurgeon. And you’re-”

“A pediatrician. We met in med school. You had a scholarship.”

“And you’re a trust fund baby.” He waves his hand and indicates for Peter to sit. “You never answered my question. Does this bother you?”

Peter cocks his head and raises his brow as he slides into the seat to his right. “Not really,” he says. Then, quietly between bites, “Do you think… Do you think we’ll always remember what it was like? Before?”

“I don’t know. The memories might fade some over time. They might merge with the ones of Peter and Greg. Or they might just linger around as nightmares of some other life and our consciousness will simply just… push it into the recesses. But I doubt they’ll go away completely.”

Peter nods and stabs at his pancake. “I could do without the headache though. That hurt like hell.”

“At least you weren’t in the shower at the time. I landed weirdly on your damn shampoo bottle and now I’ve got bruising on my lower back that’s driving me crazy. It’s been so long since I’ve felt a bruise for longer than a few minutes.”

They continue to eat, making observations on the changes to their lives and the timeline. Eventually they move to the living-room and spend the day in. Gabriel can see shades of another time in another life where they had spent so much time in close quarters just… being quiet and amusing themselves with whatever they could find on the shelves. But this time they chose this. It wasn’t imprisonment or punishment. And when they settled on the sofa, Peter wasn’t even thinking about it before he made himself comfortable with some comic books. He tucked his bare feet under Gabriel’s thigh like they’d been doing this exact same thing for years. Gabriel found he quite liked being right.

This was far better than blinking himself out of existence.

Angela Petrelli watched her second son from across the room. She was far from pleased that he’d run off to Vermont with that boyfriend of his. The least they could have done was have a proper wedding. Peter was a Petrelli for heaven’s sake. And Catholic. At least… he was until he was ex-communicated for telling the priests they could all go fuck off a cliff if they thought he was going to leave his high school sweetheart. He’d rather be happy and live in sin than be a miserable bastard like them.

It wasn’t the first time he’d pulled something like that either.

Ever since his father died he was a wild child.

Though she supposed it could be worse… A shiver runs down her spine as her son turns to look across the room at her, giving her a smile as his partner pats his shoulder to get his attention. For a moment she swears he’s looking right through her. Like he knows what she’s thinking.

Yes… She supposes it could be worse. He could have turned out like the Peter who had come back in time to change the past and erase himself with his actions.

Though… there was something about him lately…

Angela hoped that the other thing he’d said hadn’t happened. She hoped that the Peter across the room was still her precious, if rebellious, son and not the time traveling monster he could have become.

It took a while to settle into their new lives. The memories needed time to slot into place and it was confusing sometimes for the both of them. Gabriel was annoyed that he could no longer tell if anyone was lying to him or not, but the trade off was he could copy powers still, though with a little more difficulty, from Peter.

And the lack of the Hunger… he had his suspicions why his power had manifest so drastically different in this world than it had the other. Here, there was no Hunger. There was a desire to understand and to know, but there was no blood lust. There was no rage and need for violence. Only curiosity and the excitement to know and to learn new things. The same curiosity he remembered from early childhood only amplified exponentially.

But there was also no need to prove himself. He didn’t have a mother who tried to lay grand dreams on him. There was no good doctor insisting that he was special and then deciding that because he lacked an active ability he must not be so special after all. No, instead there was a patient and understanding mother who, though not Special herself understood what he was because she had seen it in his father and knew what he could become. There was no good doctor testing and testing him. HE was the Good Doctor now. One who mended what was broken in others. If he happened to learn new things along the way while he was working in their brain, then so be it. But he didn’t hunt them. He didn’t kill for them.

Their personalities sort of melded together in the process. It was a little awkward at first, but over time as their two separate lives had reconciled into a singular person and identity things became easier. Peter still had some of his old ticks from their life on the run and in the shadows. As did Gabriel he had no doubt. But there were other things exclusive to this alternate world. Like Peter absently tapping whatever he had in his hand to some inaudible tune playing around in his head. And it was aggravating, but in a way Gabriel found he was quite fond of. It would stir memories from the new Gabriel of watching this idiot kid in the dorm tapping away with his finger on one of the tables in the student lounge as he studied.

He’d gone through the entirety of Queen’s Greatest Hits before Greg had enough and threw a couch cushion at him and told him to stop it before he amputated his finger. An hour later Peter had started clicking his pen in time with ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ while wearing a stupid grin on his face.

It was the little things that helped them come to terms with the future they had created. When either one doubted if what they had done was the right thing to do, they would cross paths with someone they used to know. Dr. Suresh and his son were invited for some charity function Peter was forced to attend since Nathan backed out at the last minute. Mohinder certainly looked happier than he’d ever seen him.

When he and Gabriel - he couldn’t bring himself to call the man ‘Greg’ in private or even in his head - had stumbled across some Japanese tourists near Kirby Plaza, it was a shock to see Hiro, Ando, and Kimiko again. Apparently one of Kaito’s offices was adjacent to the plaza and the three had been brought to New York to see the sights. Mostly Kimiko and Ando had been brought to keep Hiro out of trouble.

Life was… well, it was good. Really good.

It was December 2010 when they first met Claire Bennet again. The date was not lost on either of them when they’d gotten dressed that evening for dinner with Peter’s family. There seemed to be a certain… tension to the day. A strange crackling of anticipation and worry that neither man could decipher. It just… was.

And when they arrived and handed their coats off to Angela’s butler, it seemed to only increase when they were told to proceed to the formal parlor. The parlor both knew was only used when important guests would be joining them at dinner. Or high profile society friends of Peter’s mother.

When they entered the parlor, Nathan’s voice carried over the excitable chatter of the two families that sat with Angela. Heidi and her sons to one side while the Bennets sat on the other. Gabriel froze, his grip on Peter’s hand tightening for just a moment before Peter squeezed back.

“Ah! Peter! Greg! Took you long enough!”

Gabriel gives a slightly embarrassed smile. “I was held up at the hospital. I told him he could come over without me and I’d join you when I could but he insisted on waiting. My apologies, Nathan.”

“Was it the pile up by Central Park?” Nathan asks, concern evident in his face.

Gabriel nods as Peter lets go of his hand to introduce himself to the Bennets and to Claire. “Yes. Unfortunately we couldn’t save everyone.” He doesn’t say anything more. He doesn’t need to. They’ve learned to not ask him too many questions when he pulls that stock phrase out of his conversational repertoire. So instead he moved to join Peter and allowed himself to be introduced, “This is my partner Greg.” He smiles politely to Sandra Bennet, noting that even in this altered future, the women didn’t dare leave her precious Mr. Muggles at home. He shakes Noah’s hand and sees nothing of the Company man in him now. Lyle gives them a slight nod and Claire glances at her newly discovered uncle with a friendly smile before looking to Gabriel.

He offers her his hand in genuine friendship, and she accepts it unknowing all the while of the times they had fought one another. Had killed one another. Instead, she’s just a high school graduate looking for her long lost family.

Dinner is filled with meaningless polite chatter. What people did for a living. Mr. Muggles’ multiple dog show awards and championships. Noah’s position at a paper company - and this time he really is a paper salesman and expert. His recent promotion to regional manager was something the small family hadn’t yet celebrated when Claire came to her parents wanting to find her birth family.

Claire’s impressed that her real father is a district attorney and her uncle - uncles - are both doctors. When she learns Gabriel is a neurosurgeon something lights up in her eyes. “So you know, like, all about the brain and stuff right?”

“There’s more to neurosurgery than just working on the brain. While it IS my specialty, neuroscience in general is a little broader than that. It covers spinal injury, disorders of both the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. There’s also the oncological aspect, and pediatric neurology where, obviously, the specialization focus is on treating the same issues and more in children.”

“Here he goes. She’s got him started now,” Heidi says with a light laugh. “Greg could go on for hours waxing poetic about the human body. We’ll be here for ages.”

Gabriel’s cheeks redden just a little as he reaches for his glass of wine. He gives a subtle nod in Claire’s direction before taking a sip of his drink. “Yes, well,” he says after. “I do know a lot about ‘the brain and stuff’. If you decide to go into medicine I’m sure we could give you some advice or later put in a good word for you if you need it.”

Peter reaches over and pats his thigh under the table. “That’s his way of apologizing for geeking out. You get used to it,” he said, sending a not very subtle glare at his sister-in-law. And with that the conversation moves on to Nathan and how he met Claire’s real mother and her tragic death. Admitting that he’d never known about Claire and that’s why he never looked for her.

After dessert is served the Bennets are invited to stay the night, but they beg off and insist they go back to the hotel. Nathan and his wife show them out before coming back to get Monty and Simon who are still excited about suddenly having an older sister. Nathan kisses his mother’s cheek and bids them all goodbye.

“That went better than I expected,” Angela says once she’s certain Nathan has gone. “Heidi is furious.”

“I could tell. She was drinking more than usual and jumped at the chance to insult my partner,” Peter remarks as the maid is clearing away the last of the dishes.

“Really? I didn’t see any difference from the way she normally behaves at dinner,” Gabriel added.

Angela pushes her espresso cup forward and rises from the table. Peter and Gabriel follow suit. “Will the two of you be staying the night?”

“I’ve got to be at the clinic early in the morning,” Peter says.

“I’m on call all day tomorrow,” Gabriel follows.

She gives them a thoughtful look before nodding. “It’s strange,” she says as she accompanies them to the foyer where the butler is already waiting with their coats. “Yeah, ma?” Peter asks as he shrugs his on.

“It’s nothing,” she says with the fakest smile either one of them had ever seen on her face. She comes forward and Peter lowers his head so she can kiss his cheek. “I was almost expecting you to warn me about Claire,” she says, first catching her son’s eye then Gabriel’s.

“Do we need to?” Gabriel said flatly, catching her by surprise. And for just a moment Angela doesn’t see her son and his husband standing in her foyer. She sees two very dangerous and very powerful men who could crush her and everything she holds dear with just a word.

And suddenly Peter’s preferred choice of term for his husband makes perfect sense. Angela shakes her head. “No. No I suppose not. Have a good night boys and I’ll see you again at New Years.”

The next time they meet Claire, her family invited to Angela’s annual New Years party, she’s a little distracted and overwhelmed by all of the people. Gabriel finds her wandering the house. Or rather, she found him hiding out in what had once been Arthur Petrelli’s study. It was now Angela’s home office. Photographs of Peter and Nathan sat on her desk. One from Nathan’s wedding to Heidi. Another of herself with her boys and Arthur before her husband’s murder.

Though she knew who did it, she couldn’t prove it without looking like a crazy woman. And even now she wasn’t certain… not entirely…

Claire sat at the woman’s desk and looked around the room. The mantle. The desk. Shelves. “How come they don’t seem to like you very much?”

Gabriel looked up from his book. “What makes you say that?”

“There’s pictures of my dad and his wife. And Peter. But none of you. Nobody seemed to care where you’d gone that I could tell. Except Peter.” At this she watched him nod.

“Well,” he said as he turned the page. “I imagine it’s because your grandmother was hoping that he was going through a phase when he was excommunicated. That or she still believes I’ve only married Peter for a green card.”

“What?”

“I’m Canadian. Came here on a school visa and scholarships. Met Peter and decided I never wanted to go back to the land of maple syrup and cheap prescriptions.”

Claire nearly snorts as she laughs. “I meant the… he was excommunicated? Why? Don’t they reserve that for like, really messed up stuff?”

“You’d be surprised.”

It’s ten to midnight when Peter finds them laughing together. “There you are! Your parents - all of them - are looking for you.” He glances to Gabriel. “And you’ve been hiding all night. Everything alright?”

“Crowds,” he replied, holding up his nearly forgotten book. _Pillars of the Earth_. Peter’s face softens some as he gives a subtle nod. Claire smiles at them as Peter sits on the arm of Gabriel’s chair.

“It was nice talking to one of the only normal people here,” she says. “I mean, your mom’s nice Peter. And Nathan is-”

“Yeah. I get it.” He reaches into his pocket for his phone and offers it to her. “Here,” he says. “So we can keep in touch. If you want.”

“I’d like that.” She brushed her hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear before she reached for the phone. “I’ll put myself in as Claire B. if that’s alright?”

“Of course. I’ll text you tonight or tomorrow so you’ve got my number, too.”

As soon as the door closes, Peter takes the book from Gabriel’s hands and slides into his lap. “Did you sense any…”

“No powers. She’s as normal as anyone else. I don’t know what your mother did and I don’t think I want to know. But the secret’s safe.”

“For now.”

Gabriel nods as Peter lifts himself up just to shift his position in the man’s lap. Knees wedge between a thighs and armrests as Peter makes himself far too comfortable than he should while in his mother’s home. “For now,” Gabriel agrees, his words a soft mumble as Peter slides his fingers into his hair, tilting his head back some so he can better fit their mouths together.

When they break their kiss a few moments after the fireworks have begun outside, Peter stares down into his partner’s eyes and he can see a hint of Sylar there. The echo of their other life, of the darkness that lingered on his soul.

The locks on the doors turn in their knobs without human touch. With ease Peter is lifted and thrown onto a brown leather sofa, his arms pinned above his head as his belt seemingly unbuckles itself. Buttons undone one by one as Gabriel looms closer, closer, and then his mouth is on Peter’s neck. His shoulder. Teeth grazing skin and Peter can’t help but try to buck his hips even though he can feel the strong, invisible vice grip holding him helplessly down. He could fight back - he knew he could. They both made sure of it. This wasn’t Hunger and they each knew that, too.

It’s only when Peter’s covered in bites and a few scratches that can easily be covered by his clothing that he’s released from the telekinetic hold - rock hard, breathless, and begging for Gabriel to take him right there in his mother’s office… and right over there on her desk.

Gabriel is more than happy to oblige.

Peter looked up from his magazine as Gabriel staggered out of the wooden cabin. He ripped the gloves off his hands and threw them aside.

“Well?” Peter asked, setting the magazine aside and rising to his feet. “Is he-”

“He won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Are you…”

“I didn’t take his ability if that’s what you mean, Peter. I can’t believe you talked me into this in the first place.”

“I… I know. But it’s better than killing him, isn’t it?”

Gabriel glares at him. “I’m fine with killing. Killing is what I, what we did, for years. That… Never ask me to do that again.”

“Did it… it didn’t trigger… You’re not…”

“Just spit it out Peter!” he shouts angrily, turning to the man who had saved him so many damn times. The man who had wormed his way into his mind and into his heart where no one else could have ever reached him and survived. At the man who, for some strange quirk of fate still ended up with him after they changed the future so drastically… “Go ahead! It’s right there on the tip of your tongue! Spit it out!”

“Do you have the Hunger?!”

“No! But if I have to do that again then I won’t need it to damn me again! You wanted this so badly, you go clean it up!”

And he does. Peter changes into some old, ratty clothes and grabs everything he will need out of the rental van. It wasn’t exactly the most sanitary of conditions for cranial surgery, but it wasn’t like they could haul Samuel Sullivan off to a hospital and commandeer a surgical suite for what they needed to do.

The man was given a choice - back down and turn himself in for killing his brother or Peter and Gabriel would stop him themselves. Samuel was cocky. So Peter copied his power to act as a distraction while Gabriel slammed him into the ground.

When he was done, and Samuel’s comatose body was loaded back into the van and strapped down, he set the cabin on fire and they left.

Gabriel would not speak to Peter for over a month, despite sharing an apartment and a bed.

The silence was broken when Gabriel brought home a Labrador Retriever for Peter. “To keep you company when I’m… less than sociable. Or spending all night at work.”

A week later Peter returned from work late. He’d stopped by a shelter and got a smaller, but scrappier dog for Gabriel. Though he claimed it was so that the first dog, Jesse, had a friend during the days when both of them were at work.

True to his word Peter kept in touch with Claire. More than the rest of his family did. She was fine with that. The life of the rich and famous wasn’t exactly her cup of tea. She would visit occasionally, or they would fly out to Texas when their schedules permitted. The men were surprised that Gabriel and Claire seemed to get on rather well. They both had a dark sense of humour and enjoyed shit talking the rest of Peter’s family. Not that Peter discouraged it.. Only when his mom or his brother was within hearing range.

Things were going well. Great, actually. But for some reason… they just couldn’t seem to… relax. Especially after they had dealt with every threat they knew of. Neutralized every possible danger to the exposure of their kind that they had ever encountered. Destroyed formulas and viruses. Changed the entire course of a man’s research for two generations. And yet they still felt there might have been something, someone they had overlooked.

On the morning of June 13, 2015 Adam Monroe escaped a Company holding facility in Costa Verde, CA with the help of an accomplice named Elle Bishop

Peter and Gabriel knew nothing of the escape, for neither Peter nor his mother had foreseen it.

But the whole world knew about Adam Monroe after a spectacular demonstration of what happens to the human body when it encounters quite a powerful fireworks explosion on live television for all the world to see.

“Son of a bitch,” Peter exclaimed, throwing down his pizza slice in frustration. “How the hell could I forget about that asshole!”

Gabriel silently cleaned up their dinner and quietly went to the bedroom to pack two bags. He left them by the bedroom door and waited for Peter to finish his angry ranting and come to bed. When the paramedic-turned-pediatrician found him, Gabriel held up his phone for the other man to see the email confirmation from Travelocity on his flight and hotel bookings. “At least all those trips to see Claire earned me double sky miles. The tickets are half-off and there’s a discount for the hotel, too, if I’m willing to use all my Hilton rewards points.”

Peter had been half-way undressed when Gabriel had spoken, and he stared at the phone dumbfounded and confused, leaving his shirt to hang off one shoulder.

“What? I assumed you wanted to go handle this one yourself and since you wouldn’t allow me to deal with my father alone, I’m going with you to help you deal with your own.. Personal issues.”

“What about Sparky?”

“What about her? We hand her back over to her father and she’s not our problem anymore. As for a cover story… well… new technology for films and TV. Or something. I’m sure your mother and her friends will come up with a suitable story.”

Adam Monroe’s body was returned to the Company. The head… well… Peter didn’t want to risk someone putting the two halves back together.

Adam wasn’t entirely useless though. Peter accidentally copied his regeneration ability, something he’d avoided doing when he first met Claire in this timeline because he didn’t want to live forever. As a result, Gabriel sat with the man’s head on a table and his instruments in hand. He carefully picked through to gain the ability for himself. When he was through, they dropped Adam’s head in a concrete block and stored it until they could drop the block into the ocean.

Neither man wanted to live forever, not anymore. It had never been part of the plan. But now, the plan had changed.

Neither spoke of the fate of Adam Monroe. But they contented themselves with the fact that this time Hiro still had his father around. The Company still had one of its... not good exactly, but better founders.

Peter had started coloring his hair. Just a touch of gray here. A touch of gray there. Heidi was insanely jealous of Peter and his partner’s secret to looking young as the drinking and the pettiness took its toll on her once lovely face. She’d taken to injections and plastic surgery to maintain what to her was a youthful countenance.

She never had gotten over the fact that she was Nathan’s second choice.

“It’s times like this,” Peter had said as he straightened Gabriel’s tie in the hotel room at yet another medical conference, “That I miss being able to shape-shift. Or at least have some kind of illusion ability. I’d have liked to grow old. Get some wrinkles and laugh lines.”

“We can always track down baby Parkman. No more powers.”

“He’s not so much a baby anymore,” Peter says with a sigh. “If we were to do that though, who would keep my mother and her cronies in line?” He adjusts the guest speaker badge on Gabriel’s breast pocket. Making sure it’s sitting straight and neat, just the way the man likes it. “We almost had it, didn’t we? A normal life?”

“Normal for us you mean?”

Peter nodded and was about to step away when he felt Gabriel’s fingers beneath his chin, lifting his face to look at him. “We were never meant for normal, Peter. In this life, and the last, we are destined for something more. Something…” he lets the word hang in the air as he tries to find the right thing to say.

“Extraordinary,” Peter finishes for him.

Gabriel smiles softly and leans in to brush his lips against Peter’s. An innocent, gentle peck. “Now come on. I have another award to collect and you know how much it irritates Dr. Engle’s wife that we won’t tell her our secret skin care routine.”

Peter tries not to laugh but just before they step out of the elevator ten minutes later he can’t contain it any longer. Especially as he sees the woman’s sour look when they sit down at the table across from her and her husband.

Bob Bishop was dead.

Old age had gotten him. Elle was brought out of Company holding wearing non-conductive restraints so she could attend his funeral.

Peter and Gabriel sat in the back, both men looking remarkably good for their age. They had both retired earlier that year. It had gotten harder and harder to make themselves appear older without resorting to make-up and costumes. Gabriel had decided to write medical texts while Peter pretended to be a younger Petrelli relation and volunteer at an animal shelter.

Angela never outright accused her son and his husband for Adam’s murder. But it was the only explanation she had for why they stayed so young while everyone around them aged.

When the service was over, Gabriel watched as Elle was escorted away. That is, of course, after she spat on his casket when she’d been taken past it to pay her respects. Knowing what they did about Elle’s treatment by her father and the Company neither were at all surprised by this.

But it wasn’t Angela or Elle that had caught their attention as they were leaving. It was the curious stare of Hiro Nakamura, attending in place of his sick and ailing father, that had caught them off guard momentarily.

They wouldn’t realize it until a little while later as to why.

“You broke time!”

They had been having a lovely breakfast on the deck of their new home when a much younger Hiro Nakamura appeared at the bottom of the steps leading into their backyard. Peter put down his fork, but Gabriel ignored him and instead reached for his tea as he continued to look through the proof copy of his latest text book.

Peter pushed away from the table and stood, glancing at Gabriel who just shrugged and continued on as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening at the moment. Which meant it was up to Peter to smooth things over. “Hiro, why don’t you come on up and inside.”

“No! You crushed too many butterflies! Now I have to fix it!”

“Don’t you dare even try!” Peter snapped angrily. This got Gabriel to look up and set his cup down. He hadn’t seen Peter this fired up in years. The alternate personality that had sort of… absorbed and melded into the one from their other life hadn’t been as hotheaded as the first Peter had been. Just like Greg had been much more even tempered and better adjusted than Gabriel had been.

So when he did get riled up like this, it was worth putting what he was doing down to watch the show.

“Time is fractured and broken and all the threads lead me to you! You cannot change the past on a whim, Peter Petrelli! You cannot decide who lives and who dies!”

“That so? So we should have just let Samson Gray kill his wife in front of his kid and make another serial killer out of a good man? We should have let Maury Parkman trap, torment, and abuse women and little girls with his power before turning it on his own son?” Peter stepped away from the table and towards the stairs. With each point he took a step down closer to the ground. Closer to the time traveler that once he considered a good friend. “Should I have let myself be turned into a bomb and destroy New York against my will? Or how about let an immortal man with a grudge against your father kill him and then release a virus that will wipe out 93% of the world’s population? All three of us included!”

“You do not have the right to play God, Peter Petrelli! What you have done will have untold consequences for the future! For generations to come!”

“You’ve seen these consequences? You know for a fact that what we’ve done has far worse results than where we’ve come from?”

Hiro would not back down. “Yes.”

Peter took a step back and rubbed at his eyes as if trying to stave off a headache he didn’t even feel anymore. He turned, looking up to Gabriel before shaking his head and doing something he didn’t want to do, but… it was necessary. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he said, reaching out and pressing two fingers to Hiro’s forehead. Before the man could fall to the ground, he was lifted and brought up the stairs. Peter followed as Gabriel directed the unconscious man to one of the loungers.

“What did you do?”

“Maury Parkman. If he could touch you, he could implant nightmares directly into a person’s mind. I just gave him the moment he and I first met all the way to Claire’s jump.”

"But we killed him before the..."

"One of my old patients had telepathy. It nearly drove her insane," Peter said by way of explanation.

Gabriel nodded and looked back to Hiro. “He might be out for days.”

“He’s a time traveler from over twenty years ago. He’ll be fine,” Peter said as he seated himself back down at the table. “Pass the syrup would you?” he asked as if he hadn’t just been immensely angry a few short moments ago.

Four hours later, Hiro Nakamura was gone.

They waited for memories to change and alter. For their perception of time to shift. They waited for any number of strange and unexplainable things that might occur due to a time traveler’s meddling.

None came.

Instead, the following day Peter received a call thanking him for taking an idealistic, naive young man and showing him the consequences of misusing the power he had been gifted. But they were also given a warning. Discovery was inevitable, and when it came so too would war. Peter’s only response was that at least this time they stood a fighting chance at survival.

The year was 2078.

Her name was Lydia Mayweather. She was newly 21 and attended the Savannah College of Art and Design.

She was also abducted and murdered along with two friends as they were walking back to campus from a nearby bar. She didn’t drink, but her friends did and who was she to stop them trying to celebrate her birthday.

Lydia Mayweather dragged herself out of a shallow grave and found her way into a police station to report the crime.

She was held for a psychological evaluation after she very accurately described exactly how she had been killed.

Just as Hiro Nakamura had warned them decades before, Discovery was followed quickly down the road by war.

By breaking time in the way that they had, Peter and Gabriel were able to buy their species the one thing they needed most.

Time.

Time to prepare. Time to find one another. Time to swell the population. Time to learn what to do with their inexplicable gifts of evolution.

When Angela Petrelli had finally died decades before, he had left written instructions with those who would run the Company after her. Instructions that she had hoped would see them through the other side of the great catastrophe that lay ahead.

It began with pockets of resistance. Those pockets became entire cells. The cells found their way to Company created strongholds. This time they were organized. This time a couple hundred thousand were a million with powers and abilities manifesting in newly discovered Specials nearly every day.

And it ended the same way it had begun in a time only two men remembered.

In the year 2178, a century of war ended with an exploding man in the mega-city of New York.

It wasn’t exactly Kirby Plaza, but Times Square was just as good a place as any for Mr. Trevor Paulson to suddenly manifest a power he’d never known he had when his son was ripped out of his arms and killed for the sole crime of being able to change his hair color when he laughed.

Until that point in time the Specials had withheld their Nuclear options. They had refused to allow the norms to know some of their number could detonate like a warhead and survive. That others could crack the crust of the earth on a whim. Or turn the elements completely against them.

When the Norms realized the true danger the _Evos_ posed to their kind, it was only a matter of time before they realized that for the last century they were fighting against an enemy that, at any time, could have wiped them out without a thought. And yet their enemy chose to hold back as if it were some kind of strange mercy. They didn’t know that such methods were held back for self-preservation… for had the Norms known, they would not have hesitated to escalate at the risk of destroying their own world.

But now? Now that they saw first hand a man previously thought to be one of their own explode in grief and rage and fear? No. Now they would stop. Now they would listen.

A treaty was signed. Human supremacists attempted to assassinate the Evos that had been chosen to represent the species. It was quite jarring when they all got up, wiped the blood from their faces and each placed their bloody palms on the panels that scanned their prints as signatures. It was no coincidence that Lydia Mayweather, Gabriel Gray, and Peter Petrelli under another name were among the regens chosen as dignitaries. Trust was earned, and after a long and terrible war, trust from a Special to a Norm was a rare thing indeed.

The treaty was signed by all present. Those who took part in the attack were taken into custody.

The tenuous peace lasted fourteen years before war began anew.

This time retribution was decisive and swift.

A team of specials with varying abilities trained in stealth infiltrated key locations and secured specific world leaders, dragging them out of their comfortable offices and apartments and homes right from under the nose of their security details. The purpose? To prove they could.

And these world leaders were made to sit together in a room.

What, exactly, transpired in that room no one could ever truly know. But the leaders of the human governments were returned unharmed but shaken.

Peace followed.

And with it an exodus.

It wasn’t until after the nation of Haven was founded in the wartorn wastelands of what was once Brazil that the Norms witnessed something other than the destructive powers of the Specials. The Norms should have known when the Evos didn’t protest against the inhospitable state of the land they were given that it didn’t matter where they tried to shove them off and hide them. They would struggle but in the end they would thrive. Within a handful of years Haven’s tropical forests were lush and bursting. The dead, poisoned ground was once again ready for crops. There was a rudimentary government in place. Technology seemed to advance almost overnight. Medical science exploded in directions many had only dreamed might one day be possible.

The writing was on the wall long ago, but none bothered to read it until now.

The days of _homo sapiens-sapiens_ were drawing to a close. The age of _homo superius_ had come. It was only a matter of time before mankind managed to catch up to nature.

Gabriel Gray was tired. The kind of tired that seeped deep into the bones and weighed a weariness right down into the soul. The sovereign state of Haven had been established. Their species saved. It took another hundred years or so before they were stable enough to open their doors for trade negotiations. As one of the few self-sufficient countries on the planet, it made sense now that the rest of the world was still suffering the long term effects of the war to open their arms and offer aid. After all, the man's speech had proclaimed, "We're all human."

At least, that’s what President Sanders had said at Peter’s prompting before he finally decided to retire. This time, for good.

A year later Gabriel resigned from his tenured lecturer post at one of the three universities serving Haven’s population. There were, of course, smaller colleges for those who didn’t want to spend so much time in study and academia. But the universities served a good purpose. They needed lawyers, doctors, and yes even politicians in order to run such a country.

It was decided over breakfast the day after Gabriel’s resignation that they were done saving the world. They had completed their mission and even though the world always needed saving… there were plenty of others that could do that now.

They chose a date and began to put their centuries of affairs in order.

They had chosen this date in particular for reasons they alone knew. It was… sentimental in a strange way.

On the evening of December 6th, Gabriel and Peter went out to dinner. They couldn’t get drunk but the wine tasted nice. They talked about nothing over starters. They talked about everything over the main course. They bickered and sniped over dessert before going to a hotel, their home already emptied and locked tight. The keys left with their attorney along with instructions of what to do with their joint estate after.

Neither man spared a thought for tomorrow, nor of their many yesterdays as they took turns giving each other what they craved. What they needed. Chasing release with every pained cry and every bite and scratch and bruise. Peter reveled in the wildness, in the darkness that even after all this time had never completely left the man that worked him over like a cheap back alley whore. As the white spots would start to cloud his vision, the invisible hand pressing harder on his throat, he would cry out in incoherent bliss as the intensity of his orgasm would slam into him.

And when they had rested and recovered, they would start all over. Sweet and slow at first, just the way Gabriel liked it. And Peter would sit astride him, fucking himself on his husband’s shaft and come utterly undone at the expert touches of his skilled, surgeons hands. Gabriel liked to watch him in moments like these. His eyes fluttering shut and his pouty mouth parted just a little as he whimpered and writhed atop him.

Even after all this time, after everything, it was hard to believe Peter was all his.

When morning came, the sunlight streaking through the windows of their room, it found them sleeping soundly in the bed. They clung to one another even in sleep, as if to let go would somehow unravel whatever fortuitous quirk of fate had allowed them to succeed. Had allowed them to remain together even after they had broken time and space and completely rewrote their destinies from the ground up.

Peter woke first, a rarity throughout most of their lives. He missed the soreness he used to feel after a night of marathon sex. The kind that always reminded him he was alive. He was here. He was in this moment and yes that man laying beside him was real and there and made him feel so…

“Stop thinking. I’m trying to sleep.”

“You can sleep when we’re dead,” Peter says back, his tone light but the words holding a different meaning.

The arms still wrapped around him pulled him close as Gabriel buried his nose into the back of Peter’s neck. The musk of sweat and sex a heady combination as he pressed against his back. “One more,” Gabriel said softly into his ear as he grinds his hard cock against Peter’s firm and quite tempting ass.

“Shower first. We stink.”

“We’re dying today anyway, what does it matter?”

“I don’t want to die smelling like a brothel.”

A dark chuckle tickles the skin just behind Peter’s ear. “Where’s the fun in that, Peter?”

But he lets go. He gets up and follows him to the shower.

It takes a while to get clean as Peter pins him to the wall of the shower and drops to his knees if only to stall for time.

They don’t bother getting dressed. They don’t even make it back to the bed. The couch under the window serves them just fine.

Gabriel relishes every gasp. Every drag of Peter’s nails down his arms. The pressure of his thighs and squeeze of muscle around his cock. He savors the taste of Peter’s skin and the flavor of himself on the man’s lips. And for just these few moments, they’re not heroes or villains or soldiers or doctors and teachers and protectors. They’re not Specials or Evos or survivors or time travelers. They’re just Gabriel and Peter. And in one singular moment of conjoined blissful clarity, they’re the only thing in all the world that’s truly real.

When dawn broke on December 7th, the sun wasn’t shining. In fact it was pouring down cats and dogs as the young woman had sat and waited for daylight in the dark, musty smelling room.

She had never liked her powers.

No. That wasn’t right. She loved her powers. They were awesome.

She never liked how she got them.

But, as the men in the bed across the room had told her many times over the years, she couldn’t help the power she was born with. It was a roulette wheel of genetics. One Petrelli a generation usually ended up with it. And boy did her family line go back a long way. Usually it was the men that tended to have it. The women usually got anything from the grab-bag of powers tied to their genetics. Elemental manipulation from the Shaw line. Prophetic dreaming from them, too. Flight and cellular regeneration if you came from the Bennet branch.

Once in a while a pyrokinetic would pop up from the Bennet branch, too. Like her brothers.

But no. She got stuck with the Petrelli Curse. And she was about to take the one power she’d avoided for years. Immortality had never appealed to her. It helped that the two sleeping men had paid her handsomely as a bribe.

Finally she stubbed out her cigarette, took one more sip of tea, and stood from the sofa. She’d done her good deed. She’d given them a nice dream before she stripped away their powers. Sure she’d be sick for a few days to a week or so given how many the two men had amassed over the centuries, but it was a small price to pay in exchange for the amount of power she was about to obtain. A small price to pay for the service she was about to render.

She crossed the room and went to the end of the bed, staring down at the two oldest people she’d ever met, knowing what would happen when she did what she was paid to do. With a flick of her fingers, she exposed their feet and then leaned forward and placed a hand on an ankle of each man. Closing her eyes and taking a shallow breath, she focused. Within moments she felt her body flooded with power. All of her senses heightened and she could feel the synapses in her brain firing up like a God damned Christmas tree as she assimilated hundreds of years worth of abilities. Some she already had, but others… others had been lost in the wars. Some even before the wars.

Her muscles burned. Her head was throbbing and she could feel a trickle of blood running down from her nose and bile rising in the back of her throat. Just as she felt she couldn’t take anymore, the flesh beneath her hands wrinkled. It sagged and then dried and turned to leather and cracked and then…

She opened her eyes to see two piles of dust in the bed. Her hands were coated in it. With a shout of surprise the woman staggered back in horror. They hadn’t told her… She didn’t expect THIS to happen. She’d never taken the abilities of someone so… so old before. She didn’t know that without the regeneration…

Morticia Petrelli-Kingston spent two hours in the bathroom vomiting before she called it in, as was procedure when someone like her is called in to remove or deactivate a person’s abilities for any reason. It helped cover her ass if, and in this case, when someone died from it.

For the first time since she’d started this job, she was really regretting not asking any questions. How the hell was she supposed to explain that the clients had literally aged to death so badly that they were… well… dust in the wind?

As she hurried to the bathroom again, barely making it to the toilet in time to puke again, she at least took comfort in the fact that her mentors had died happy.


End file.
